ServerBeach Blog

From left to right - Angela Ramirez - Manager of Client Loyalty, Allison - Customer Service, and Amy - Billing Department.

Employees of the ServerBeach San Antonio division partied it up and got their game on at Dave and Buster’s last Thursday to celebrate the ServerBeach 10,000 server milestone. Ted Smith, Vice President of Operations was able to join in on the fun while visiting San Antonio. We had food, drinks, gaming competition and ServerBeach Trivia. Congrats to Team #4 for winning the gaming competition. Jim Bair, DC Ops Technician and previous customer to ServerBeach, won the ServerBeach Trivia with only missing five answers out of 21. Congrats Jim! Some of the trivia questions related back to the beginning days of ServerBeach, such as:

1. What is the name of the person who founded ServerBeach?
2. What year was ServerBeach founded?
3. What was the name of building where the first ServerBeach datacenter and office were located?
4. What was the name of the first ServerBeach server?

All of the employees sported some cool limited edition 10,000 t-shirts (see pic). The purpose of this event was to recognize a huge accomplishment for ServerBeach and for the PEER 1 company. When PEER 1 acquired ServerBeach 3.5 years ago, SeverBeach had approximately 4,500 servers. We have now more than doubled our server count and tripled in revenue growth. This couldn’t have been done without the hard work from employees all across the PEER 1 organization.

See more pictures

We’ve reached the 10,000 servers mark! This is a big milestone for ServerBeach and we want to thank you for helping us get here! Below is part of the official press release that went out late yesterday:

The company has reached this milestone through its dedication to providing the kind of control and flexibility that customers expect, in order to grow their businesses and web presence.

“We are very proud to reach this landmark with our strong customer loyalty and support,” said Fabio Banducci, president and CEO of PEER 1. “This milestone also reflects the company’s continuous growth in the very competitive self-managed hosting arena. We strongly believe this has been accomplished in part because ServerBeach has maintained its commitment to go above and beyond what other self-managed hosting companies provide, with much needed resources and support that help our customers succeed.”

Unlike competitors, where service often ends once the server is connected, ServerBeach is focused on providing its customers with continued support as their businesses grow. ServerBeach offers 24/7/365 customer service and automation tools that make self-managed hosting as simple as possible.

Automation tools include Rapid Reboot(TM) and Rapid Rescue(TM), which are powerful self-management tools optimized in-house by ServerBeach and available to customers free of charge. Rapid Reboot(TM) enables customers to restart their web servers instantly and on-demand, without having to wait on a technician to reboot them. Rapid Rescue(TM) is one-of-a-kind, allowing customers to rescue their dedicated servers from potentially fatal errors without waiting for assistance from an onsite technician.

Strategically located across the U.S., in California, Texas and Virginia, ServerBeach takes advantage of the high performance, fully redundant PEER 1 network, with 15 state-of-the-art data centers in 12
cities and 20 network points-of-presence across North America and Europe. Customers can expect reliable service, minimal latency, disaster recovery, and geographic diversity.

“I tried and quit several hosting vendors before discovering ServerBeach,” said Mike Mitchell, CIO at Winnovate.com. “I’ve used ServerBeach almost exclusively for over 4 years now and am very happy with their pricing, reliability, and support. Finally, a web hosting company I can count on!”

Microsoft Corp. yesterday warned of a critical vulnerability that affects users of Word running on Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 SP1 — several weeks after one security company first reported an exploit and a day after a second vendor confirmed ongoing attacks. In an advisory posted Friday, Microsoft acknowledged “public reports of very limited, targeted attacks” that exploit a bug in the Microsoft Jet Database Engine, a Windows component that provides data access to applications including Microsoft Access and Visual Basic.

According to Symantec Corp., however, the attacks Microsoft described used malicious Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007 documents, which in turn call up the vulnerable Jet .dll (Dynamic Link Library file).

For further infrormation on this, head on over to ComputerWorld and read the full story. You can find the Microsoft Security Advisory here.

ServerBeach, Blue Flavor, and Raincity Studios are proud to present the 3rd annual South by Northwest (SXNW) Geek Fest Party at the Iron Cactus in downtown Austin, TX. This is one of the hottest events during SXSW. There will be plenty of free drinks and cool people to meet. Over 1,700 people showed up last year with line ups out the door. Come early and meet the Beach crew. We’ll also have a booth at SXSW Interactive and will be giving out plenty of Beach swag.

About Iron Cactus: a Southwestern style grille and Margarita Bar. They pride themselves on presenting authentic Southwestern cuisine, gleaning recipes and ingredients from Southern Mexico to Utah. Plus, Iron Cactus features more than 80 Tequilas and is considered in the top 10 best Tequila bar in the world.

Venue: Iron Cactus, 606 Trinity Street at 6th Ave, Austin, Texas 73301

For more details about this event, including maps, comments, and other attendees, visit the event page by clicking here. We hope to see you there!

Earlier on this month I posted about a promotion here at ServerBeach with a few details. Today, I’d like to share the press release that went out today that includes full details of our “Sandbox Servers” -

Developers explore and test a suite of Microsoft design and management tools within a secure, dedicated environment

VANCOUVER, BC – February 26, 2008 – PEER 1 Network Enterprises, Inc. (TSX-V: PIX), a leading provider of online IT infrastructure, has partnered with Microsoft to offer 50 free developer sandbox servers for a 30-day trial. Web developers now have a chance to work with full control on a collection of Microsoft website development applications in a dedicated server environment.

“We are pleased to offer this great program that meets the needs of developers who want to explore new applications and ensure that they work well before exposing them in a production environment,” said Robert Miggins, vice president of business development for PEER 1. “With the sandbox servers we give developers the platform and tools they require to build applications, test, and deploy, all with a seamless experience.”

The 30-day free period is a unique opportunity for web developers and agencies to explore both the internal and external aspects of testing and developing a website and other online applications using some of the latest Microsoft software that has been pre-loaded into the sandbox server and is connected into PEER 1’s extensive online network infrastructure.

“This program is a good opportunity for developers in any field,” said John Zanni, director of hosting for the Microsoft Communications Sector. “Working together in a more collaborative and supportive environment enables developers to build better applications and compatible offerings, which can better meet customer needs and increase both business and customer revenue.”

The developer sandbox supports IIS 6, .ASP.NET 2.0 and PHP 5 and provides the following design and management tools:

* Microsoft® Expression® Studio: Expression Studio includes Expression Blend, Expression Web, and Expression Design - The professional design tools and innovative technologies in Expression Studio give you the flexibility and freedom to bring your vision to reality.

* Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions: Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition – This is the ideal tool for productively building object-oriented applications for Windows on the .NET Framework.

* Microsoft Silverlight – A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

* Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005 – This tool contains features that will help your team develop data applications in a fraction of the time, helping to drive data to the corners of your business.

Microsoft and PEER 1 invite developers to apply to participate in the sandbox. Once approved developers gain free root access to a server set up in PEER 1’s San Antonio data center for 30 days with no contract and no obligation.

***As a bonus, developers who decide to order a server from PEER 1 at the end of the free sandbox server period will receive a Microsoft tool package, including Microsoft Expression Web ($299 value), Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft ASP.NET training ($1099 value), at no additional cost.***

Visit http://www.peer1.com/hosting/sandbox.php for more information.

About PEER 1
PEER 1, a leading online IT infrastructure provider, believes in the limitless opportunity of the Internet and the business growth and continuity it provides for its more than 9,000 customers. PEER 1 delivers highly scalable managed hosting and co-location solutions to ensure customers’ online presence is always fast, always available. Since 1999, PEER 1 has grown to include data centers and network points of presence in 17 major cities across North America and Europe. Serving a variety of companies, PEER 1 offers solutions that grow through every stage of web commerce, regardless of company size. The company’s headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and the stock is traded on the TSX Venture exchange under the symbol PIX.

For more information visit: http://www.peer1.com.

We are proud to offer the MGuard Smart hardware firewall, the smallest security device available delivering amazing security and performance. *

With the growing problem of malicious activity on the Internet, security is a huge concern. To counter this growing issue, ServerBeach has released the mGuard Smart single server hardware firewalls on Category 3 and Category 5 servers.*
To order a mGuard Smart firewall, please contact an account manager or a sales representative at 1-800-741-9939.

* Available as a limited release starting February 25, 2008.
Available only in our San Antonio, TX data center at this time.

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 Series features high performance with sustained throughput reading at 100MB/s and writing at 80MB/s. The Access time is less than 0.1 mses!

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 has high reliability with

- Wear-leveling Algorithm
- BCH 7 Bit Error Correction Code (ECC)
- Bad Block Management Algorithm
- Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 1,000,000 hours
- Data Retention: 10 years at 25 degrees Celcius

A ServerBeach customer, Kevin Burton has been testing and running benchmarks on this drive and posting frequent updates on his blog. Thanks Kevin!

While this is still being tested at ServerBeach, we expect to be able to offer this to our customers in the near future. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and your future e-mails!

It seems that Microsoft began feeding Windows Vista users last week updates to prep PCs for next month’s release of Service Pack 1. These updates have crippled some machines, according to messages posted to the company’s support site.

Last Tuesday, Microsoft started sending Vista users two final prerequisite updates that are required before SP1 can be installed in March. The updates to the operating system’s install components were delivered via Windows Updates, which automatically downloaded and installed them on the majority of Vista machines. Looking at the feedback on the support site, it appears that users were quite unhappy and they have every right to be.

In many instances, users reported that the final update hung while displaying the message “Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 - 0% Complete,” which was followed by a reboot of the PC. Which was followed by another reboot, and another. “[It] reboots ad infinitum,” said Frank Melk on the Microsoft support newsgroup. A smaller number reported a different problem: After the update, their computer refused to boot normally.

Trying to boot into Safe Mode did no good, users said; the reboot loop cranked up then as well. “I am unsure as to what to do, because entering Safe Mode gives the same screen,” Melk said. “Furthermore, I have no restore points saved, so going back to a known previous good config is no good either!”

Users are posting situations they’ve experienced:
“The first two restore points available to me failed,” noted another user, pegged as phazedoubt. “I had to go back 3 days before I found one that worked.”

Some users who posted messages to the same newsgroup said that they had managed to regain control of the computer by booting from their Vista install DVD, and selecting the “Restore from a previous restore point” option.

“Apparently, so Microsoft says, my machine was restarted thinking it had downloaded an update, but really the update hadn’t been downloaded,” said user bicksbah on the support newsgroup. “So, upon reboot, it couldn’t find the update and Vista kept trying to install it endlessly.”

Messages left on the newsgroup indicate that Microsoft is aware of the problem.